Giannina Braschi

Tess O'Dwyer (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Thomas Nulley-Valdés, Australian National University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.7: Chicano/Latino Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Nuala Finnegan (University College Cork), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Regina Mills (University of Michigan)

Dates

Born 5 Feb 1953
Activity 1980-ongoing

Places

Born in Puerto Rico
Active in Puerto Rico; United States

Cultural Identities

Latino/a US-American

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet

Other

Literary Critic/ Historian
Playwright / Dramatist
Political Philosopher

Resources

Giannina Braschi is a leading force of innovation in American and Latin American literature and political philosophy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Braschi writes mixed-genre epic works in Spanish, Spanglish, and English about the marvels and travesties of the human flow—of mass migration, mass incarceration, democracy, economy, and revolution—and of enduring humanistic themes of creativity, love, liberty, and hope.

The United States Library of Congress qualified Braschi’s genre-defying writings as cutting-edge, influential, and revolutionary. Her works include the epic poem El imperio de los sueños (1988) [Empire of Dreams, 1994], the groundbreaking Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), and the geopolitical tragicomedy United States of Banana (2011). Her magnum opus PUTINOIKA (2024) is a mixed-genre tragicomedy in the era of the late-stage American empire marked by collusion, pollution, and delusion.

Braschi creates “hard-hitting,...

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4908 words

Citation: O'Dwyer, Tess. "Giannina Braschi". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 March 2026 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13027, accessed 09 June 2026.]